Mm-hmm.

But that was mainly because my science department head in high school saw my aptitude, and she helped me get my first job in a lab in high school at the Michigan Cancer Foundation.

And then when I went to do my master's at Wisconsin, I did biomedical engineering and did knee ligament biomechanics, and then the combination drug therapies and tumor microenvironment in lung cancer for my PhD.

And then when I started my post-docs, I originally wanted to study cancers that metastasized to bone, 'cause that would sort of be a good way to bridge both of those areas.

So I did some work in bone biology again and bone biomechanics, and then I went to look at arsenic-induced carcinogenesis in lung epithelial cells.

And then I went to a breast cancer lab to work on invasive proteins, and then eventually looking at using histological staining to change different markers in the cells with antibodies, that then you could digitally change the color to something different, and then you could look at how everything happens on a single cell level to see how things change as a function of tumor growth or resistance.

And then I finally said, "I'm off this post-doc train," because I still wasn't really getting help getting grants, and they weren't getting funded, and I said, "I'm getting too old to still, you know, be struggling and trying to make a path that clearly is not going to happen." So then I ended up getting a job in the nonprofit sector.

Can you talk a little bit more about that and how it informs the mission of your nonprofit, Check?

So how should ordinary people think about or pay attention to things like biomarkers, genomic testing and precision medicine without necessarily getting overwhelmed? And can you describe, sorry, can you define these concepts or these technologies for us in very simple terms that we can understand?

So genomic testing is testing of all of your DNA to see what genes may be over-underexpressed, what might be an indicator of prevalence or likelihood of a disease, what might, sometimes you might do genetic testing where you compare it across your family to see if there's other risk of disease.

And biomarkers are more, it can be multiple, it could be like a molecule, it could be a protein factor, but it's something that can be detected typically in blood or cells that then can be analyzed and standardized.

And then it serves as an indicator of you either have a disease or you have a marker that can be treated or you have a marker of resistance or a marker of therapeutic response.

So biomarkers help you identify the disease and possibly what treatments can be given for that disease.

Not always, but in lung cancer, there's like 11 different biomarkers.

And some of these biomarkers have one, sometimes two, sometimes four, sometimes five lines of therapy.

Now, how do you think AI could genuinely improve cancer care?

Uh, can you, can you talk a little bit about that, please?

Um, you know, part of my work, I did study cancer stem cells in lung cancer.

And like I s- um, it was very surprising when I grew these as implanted, um, implanted the cell, then they grew as tumors, and then we saw this increased angiogenesis just from the stem cell-derived tumors compared to the bulk population.

And I was like, "What is this?" Now, we already know that H460 tumors are very vascularized, are pretty vascularized, but they were even more vascularized from the stem cell-derived tumors.

And interestingly, these tumors grew a little slower, if my memory is correct.

They grew slower, but they were definitely still very aggressive.

But, you know, when you think about, as you said, you, we attack the bulk cells.

I mean, we have different races, we have different sexes, and, and it, it's, it's a research, you know, from your point of view, it's a research considering the different races, dif- different sexes, you know, in regards to how tumor behaves as well.